Small Business Tools Shine at Demo

My favorite group of products at Demofall is the one aimed at small businesses. Most software is aimed either at consumers, or large enterprises, with the result that the small business market often has to make due with products that...

My favorite group of products at Demofall is the one aimed at small businesses. Most software is aimed either at consumers, or large enterprises, with the result that the small business market often has to make due with products that weren't really aimed at it. Now it is notoriously hard to reach small businesses, but Demofall was a showcase for a number of very nice looking solutions, from cash management to setting and tracking business goals.

Cashview is a great-looking software-as-a-service solution for managing the day-to-day finances of your business. The system can handle invoicing and billing, which is nice; but more importantly, handling paying your bills. The way it works is that you would send your bills into Cashview by fax, email or scanning; then have everything appear electronically, with you selecting when to pay the bills. This gives you a great view of the cash going out and coming into your business; and perhaps more importantly gives you an electronic record of everything, including visual images of all your bills. It's currently aimed at companies with under 500 employees. In its trial phase it is free through the end of the year; then $10 per user per month and $1 per transaction. I can see where that would add up, but of course, the price of handling all the bills is expensive as well. One big question is whether you want to trust a startup with all your bills, but this looks like it could really help out a lot of small companies.

BatchBook from BatchBlue Software is a simple solution for managing contacts, communications, and tasks aimed at small businesses. It's not a full blown customer relationship management system, but instead a much simpler way of keeping track of the customers and things you need to do for them. It's basic, but quite useful, and at $9.95 a month for the basic version, very well priced.

AgendiZe has what it describes as a "call to action" platform, which lets a business easily add a single button to its web site that lets a web site visitor more easily get in touch with the company. With one button, the user can add their phone number and request a call; start an instant message chat; add the business to its bookmarks, or send information to their phone, email, or printer. In short, it tries to convert web site visitors to buyers. It starts at $49 per year, and looks quite good.

Longjump is a collection of very focused Software-as-a-Service applications, with plans to offer a large catalog of choices, rather than having its customers create their own. It makes it easy for business users to choose the specific applications they want for their business, from such things as a job leads application to an IT asset manager to a sales force automation tool based based on the enterprise-class CRM solution of Relationals.com. It starts at $20 per user per month. There aren't that many applications up there yet, but the idea is interesting.

PlanHQ basically takes your business plan, and makes it interactive. The idea is that instead of using a static document or spreadsheet to track how your business is doing, you set up a web site which has all the basic tasks that you need each team to do. This way you can list the tasks and track your progress towards making the business goal. This allows for simple collaboration, taking the best ideas of a wiki and combining with it a business plan and basic project management. It sounds simple, but it really looks very useful, and is available at a reasonable price ranging from $9/month for 3 users to $49 for unlimited users.

All of these are interesting, with Cashview and PlanHQ standing out in my mind.

Michael J. Miller's Forward Thinking Blog: forwardthinking.pcmag.com
Michael J. Miller is chief information officer at Ziff Brothers Investments, a private investment firm. From 1991 to 2005, Miller was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine, responsible for the editorial direction, quality, and presentation of the world's largest computer publication.
No investment advice is offered in this blog. All duties are disclaimed. Miller works separately for a private investment firm which may at any time invest in companies whose products are discussed in this blog, and no disclosure of securities transactions...
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